Remote audio recording typically involves six distinct steps, and up to four parties. The steps are auditions, signing a contract, scheduling a session, recording a performance, paying for services rendered, and reconciling accounts. The four parties are the artist who performs, the agent who manages the artist's business affairs, the producer who engages the artist on a contractual basis, and the client who underwrites the recording.
In the endeavor of voice-over and music production for audio or audio-visual media, such as commercials, advertisements, television programs, movies, and the like, there are a variety of costs in completing such productions. These costs generally include studio rental, travel expenses, and salaries for production staff and the talent employed for the production.
In order to reduce such costs, and with the advent of high-speed data transfer over computer networks, remote recording for voice-over production has been gaining wider acceptance. Remote recording is generally accomplished today using any of a variety of available technologies. In one example used primarily in remote audio production, dedicated integrated services digital network (ISDN) lines are provided between the location of production staff and a separate location for the hired talent for purposes of communication. This high-end approach has been used for over a decade, and allows full duplex communication (2-way talking) thru the ISDN lines to manage the production. Such methods allow multiple tracks of a sound mix to the talent so that he or she may read a script while hearing audio tracks in their headphone. However, such setups require expensive encoding and decoding hardware on each end, and expensive dedicated data lines from a telecommunications provider. In the case of an audiovisual production, such setups also do not allow the talent to read the script while watching the commercial's video. In addition, recordings are generally made at the receiving end, usually a professional sound studio, and not in the talent's home or preferred location.
Another existing remote production setup involves a phone session employing file transfer protocol (FTP). In recent years, this has become a common method for remote recording. In this setup, the producer or director may call the talent on the phone and direct him or her over the phone. The talent then records the tracks on, for example, his home computer. Generally, the Producer who chooses this method is editing on a digital system such as AVID, and will import the sound file into their editing system when the session is over. However, the size of the resulting file may oftentimes be too large to send via FTP, and so the talent must edit out the unwanted parts, and then upload the file to a server so the Producer/Director can download it.
A still further remote production setup involves initiating a phone session for purposes of direction and management, recording the session in an MP3 format, and e-mailing or otherwise transmitting the recorded session to production staff. MP3 compression allows for file sizes that are small enough to be e-mailed or otherwise easily transferred over the Internet. However, such audio compression formats may reduce the sound quality of the recorded session, and therefore be inappropriate for use in high-quality productions.
Some producers have opted for unsupervised voice-over/music work with remote productions. In such cases, the producer/director will e-mail a script to the talent, who will read it without being directed, and will then send the recorded tracks back by FTP, e-mail, or other appropriate method as described previously. However, unsupervised sessions may result in unsatisfactory recordings upon review by the production staff, and so such systems have the potential to actually increase costs when remedial recording sessions are necessary.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus for remote voice-over/music production and management that addresses certain problems in existing methods and technologies.